The results of asking a deceptively simple question: what is for sale in Australian VET markets?

Assuming Australian training markets represent successful policy implementation facilitates an exploration of the implications of their maturation and decline by querying what is sold in these markets. A Foucauldian discourse analysis of relevant documentation suggests that training markets overwhelmingly provide products and/or services. Further examination found that the two are conceptually confused as is the contention of a single national vocational education and training market. Ontological rhetorics have been used to indiscriminately conflate products and services in pursuit of preferred political values. The performative work being done by uncritically mingling the discourses of two distinctively different markets for bureaucratic and political purposes has outlived its usefulness. Brief transactions that provide useful, yet low value, compliance-driven products differ substantially from markets that deliver educational services by developing longer term relationships that increase the national stock of higher-level occupational skills. Recognising the differences between product and service markets and the reality of business life cycles invites more tailored market operational and regulatory approaches.